One of my favorite ways for parents to maintain and generalize skills learned during therapy is to incorporate learned skills into seasonal or holiday activities. It ensures that concepts will be presented in a new way (in the context of the holiday). It also familiarizes children with seasonal and holiday traditions and objects. Easter eggs are one of the easiest and most versatile tools for generalization.

Senator Darrell Steinberg has authored a bill, SB 126, to extend California’s autism insurance mandate until July 1, 2019. Without this bill, the autism mandate will sunset in 2014. The Senate Health Committee will hear this bill on April 10th, and your letters in support of the bill are vital to its passage. For your convenience, we have attached a sample letter of support. Of course, we encourage you to share your personal story with Senator Steinberg regarding the importance of the autism insurance mandate to you and your family. All letters should be emailed to Louis.Vismara@sen.ca.gov or faxed to (916)327-8867. Your support makes all the difference!

As you may have heard, California’s Department of Insurance filed emergency regulations last month which were made permanent this week. These regulations reiterate existing law and target the delays and denials of insurance carriers who have sought to limit the application of California’s autism mandate. This is a great victory for California’s autism community, as the permanent regulations represent another tool in the arsenal of families who have been struggling to get authorization for autism treatment or battling with insurance carriers to get sufficient hours and authorizations in a timely fashion.

Award-winning television and radio personality, author, and speaker Leeza Gibbons will appear on “Let’s Talk Autism with Shannon & Nancy” today at 11:00 am (PDT) on www.autism-live.com . She will appear on the highly popular, live web show to discuss her new book, Take 2: Your Guide to Creating Happy Endings and New Beginnings. Gibbons plans to open up about her personal and professional life and how she learned to overcome life’s obstacles and create her own happy endings and new beginnings.

Have you ever felt like you were alone and no one understood what you were going through? I have to be honest, in the first year after my son was diagnosed with Autism, I felt that way a great deal of the time. For me that feeling of isolation got better over time. I was lucky that some people reached out their hands and showed me that my family’s journey was a group marathon, not a solo sprint. Those helping hands made all the difference and I am forever grateful to them. But if I’m completely honest there are still days, 7 years after we first got that diagnosis, that I marvel at the sometime complete lack of compassion for what my son has gone through, and what so many other families dealing with Autism are going through. “Where is the compassion, where is the perspective taking from people who are supposedly neuro-typical??!!!” I sometimes rage. Those moments leave me feeling powerless and I’ve decided to do something about it.

My favorite things about this project? It is SO easy and it is age appropriate for everyone! (Who hasn’t been mesmerized by the soothing sound of a rain stick?) Children as young as two can help make a rain stick with adult assistance and older children can make their rain sticks independently.